Monthly Archives: April 2013

In 1984 3D printing was born, and after some incredible advances in 3D printing technology over the past twenty years, we’re now at a point where we’re beginning to see some impressive results.

I have put together a list of some of the craziest, most impressive and potentially world-changing 3D printed objects that have so far been created by this mind-blowing technology – which is still only in its infancy.

1. Artificial blood vessels

Back in 2011 a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany successfully overcome problems in tissue engineering when they printed working blood vessels.

There had been a number of research teams that tried to overcome the problems involved in providing artificial tissue with nutrients that need to arrive via capillary vessels, but these results from the German team are the most promising.

If creating working blood vessels wasn’t impressive enough, the technology could soon be used to help those patients on organ donation lists, and allow us to print fully working organs for transplant.

2. A gun

While an entire 3D printed gun hasn’t yet been made, technological advances have meant that certain parts of guns can be. Lower receivers, the parts of a gun that include the workings of the trigger and the magazine, have already been successfully printed and fitted by some 3D printing/gun enthusiasts – and it’s been causing quite a bit of controversy.

Should the technology improve to a point where additional gun parts can be manufactured (and the odds of that happening are pretty strong) then 3D printers could effectively kill a country’s gun control legislation, with individuals effectively able to create their own weapons at home – or at least, part of them.

3. A prosthetic jaw

In 2012 Belgium scientists created a 3D-printed jawbone for an 83-year-old woman after her jaw became badly infected. The standard 20-hour surgery required to reconstruct the jaw was deemed too dangerous considering the patients age, so something else had to be thought up…

While prosthetic jaws have been created before, the operation was the first ever to involve a 3D printed prosthetic. The prosthetic jaw was printed in layers from titanium powder before being covered in a ‘bioceramic’ coating.

4. Other 3D printers…

In 2007 RepRap Project (short for replicating rapid prototyper) – a company whose goal is to develop the world’s first self-replicating 3D printer – released Darwin, a 3D printer capable of printing almost all of its component parts.

RepRap Project hopes one day to be able to supply their 3D printers cheaply to people around the world, and to communities in need of materials normally associated with expensive industrial processes that they have no access to.

Exciting news for global development – these self-replicating 3D printer could well bring about a new industrial revolution in the 21st century.

This is an article by Rob Henry who is one of the directors at Ink Worldwide, which provides products like Epson, HP, Canon and Brother Ink and Toner throughout the UK. Rob has been with Ink Worldwide from the beginning and has played a major role in helping run and grow the company.

12 ways Windows 8 dominates the OS competition – Beyond the vilified modern UI lies a bounty of basic desktop functions that blow the competition out of the water. Seriously. Remember how hard Windows 7 rocked? All that awesome is still there in Windows 8, just buried beneath Live Tiles. Speaking of which, while we were all busy whining about those shifty squares, Microsoft snuck some handy functionality into the modern UI—aspects of which have no peers among Windows’ rivals.

Make a Movie With Your Smartphone – Smartphones have gone from showing movies to making them. Here are some of the accessories you’ll need to help your entry hit Cannes.

Here’s why Bitcoin is the future of money – Bitcoin may not last, but crypto-currency is here to stay. It’s only a matter of time before a government replaces paper with more traceable, secure digital money. But is that a good thing?

How to install GNOME 3.8 on Ubuntu – If you want to try Ubuntu 13.04, but prefer a different desktop than Unity, Jack Wallen shows you how you can install the latest iteration of GNOME Shell (3.8) and why you should give it a try.

Wattwave brings power line technology into the smarter home – Smart homes are about to get a whole lot smarter with Wattwave power line technology from startup enModus. Wattwave runs on a low-cost, off-the-shelf 32-bit ARM microprocessor, with an analog subsystem coupling it to the mains. The analog subsystem was recently moved from a set of 350 discrete components to a semi-custom analog array chip — a more compact (7x7mm) and lower-cost ($2.50) solution.

Hit by LivingSocial Hack? Get a Password Manager Now! – This past Friday, LivingSocial disclosed that an attacker gained access to over 50 million accounts. For users of the popular deals website, it’s scary—even though the financial information remained secure and the passwords remain encrypted. But a password manager can make future attacks less likely and less damaging.

Why changing your LivingSocial password won’t save you – LivingSocial revealed last week that it was the victim of a cyber attack that compromised the account details of its 50 million customers. To address the situation, LivingSocial sent a notice to customers, and reset users’ passwords to force people to create new ones. Don’t make the mistake of believing that changing your password is your only concern.

Would you let a spammer give you a root canal? Sure you would! – When someone contacts you entirely for their benefit, out of the blue, and pitches you a concept that is peculiar at best, and outright alarming at worst……you really do find yourself thinking, “Why? WHY? What can the sender POSSIBLY hope to get out of this?”

Company News:

Infographic: 25 Years of Linksys Routers – Iconic networking company Linksys is celebrating its 25th birthday today. President and CEO Victor Tsao founded the company in 1988 with his wife in their home garage. Within five years, Linksys surpassed Intel, 3Com, and Netgear in the retail market as the top networking hardware manufacturer.

Webopedia Daily:

Offline Storage Table (OST) – An OST file, or offline storage table (.ost) file, is an offline Outlook Data File used by Microsoft Exchange Server that enables users to work with their messages and mail data even when access to the mail server isn’t available. OST files are used in two scenarios: with Microsoft Exchange Server’s Cached Exchange Mode and with the Outlook Connector for Windows Live Hotmail when accessing Hotmail mail. While a Microsoft Exchange Server user’s e-mails and other data items are normally saved directly on the mail server, OST files are an available option that enable a local copy of all the data to be stored on the user’s computer. These items are then automatically synched when access to the mail server is restored.

Games and Entertainment:

Microsoft Teases Immersive ‘IllumiRoom’ for Gamers – IllumiRoom brings a more immersive gaming experience right to your living room. IllumiRoom is described as “a proof-of-concept system that augments the area surrounding a television with projected visualizations to enhance traditional gaming experiences,” which means everything from extending gameplay to the borders of your living room to making it appear as though it’s snowing inside the house.

The best action games for Android – Sometimes, you just need a quick game fix. And even if you have a high-powered gaming rig at home that’s raring to go, it won’t do you any good while you’re standing on a corner, waiting for a bus. That’s where mobile action games come in.

Game Dev Tycoon battles digital piracy with digital piracy – A new game called Game Dev Tycoon is forcing software pirates to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The game, which costs $8 on Windows, Mac, and Linux, lets players run their own game development studios. Players start off in their garages in the 1980s, and slowly become multimillion-dollar corporations.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Designing your digital legacy – We lead rich virtual lives on social networking sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. So what happens when real life catches up, and our flesh-and-blood bodies succumb to mortality? For our virtual selves, at least, some concrete answers are available—ways to settle our digital affairs after death, while minimizing hassle and heartache for loved ones.

What is Amithings – Amithings is a service designed to store information based on seven principles which are standardization, organization, structure, centralization, security, reliability and completeness, in order to provide a perfect integration between the real world and the virtual world with minimum effort. We believe that its concepts are capable of causing a paradigm shift in how we create our virtual world and interact with him. Amithings is not “just another Internet project”, and you will soon find out why.

China’s unique PC buying trends revealed in survey – China took the title of world’s largest market for PCs in 2012, and a survey by IHS iSuppli revealed that computer buyers in the country had unique preferences compared to counterparts worldwide. The research firm said that last year a majority of PCs in China shipped without an operating system pre-installed, and a large chunk of laptops had a 14-inch screen. Desktops remained well and alive in China, with shipments equalling laptops in 2012.

Today’s Quote:

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

– Thomas Jefferson

Today’s Free Downloads:

Data Crow 3.9.22 – Data Crow is the ultimate media cataloger and media organiser. Always wanted to manage all your collections in one product? You want a product you can customize to your needs? Your search ends here! Using Data Crow allows you to create a huge database containing all your collected items. You can use the excellent online services to retrieve the information instead of typing all the information yourself.

iSpy – iSpy uses your webcams and microphones to detect and record movement or sound and provides security, surveillance, monitoring and alerting services.

Free Ringtone Maker – Free Ringtone Maker is an extremely simple and handy Windows software for making your own free ringtones. Make Your Own Ringtones in 3 Easy Steps.

Every day, innocent websites are compromised by malicious hackers. Google identifies almost 10,000 malware-infected websites each day, and half of those are genuine websites belonging to legitimate companies. These companies haven’t done anything wrong, but they find themselves blacklisted by Google, and that’s only the edge of the brutal iceberg.

Hackers inject vicious malware into these sites to infect visitors. They confuse and lure users to dodgy websites and they break in and steal important and often sensitive customer information.

It’s a real and constant problem, but there are easy and simple steps you can take to guard against these attacks and keep your site, your network, and your customers safe and sound.

1. Use strong passwords, keep them secure and change them frequently

We all know that we should choose complex passwords, but sometimes laziness takes over and we slack off. This is a crucial mistake. Obviously, you want to choose exceptionally strong passwords for your server and website admin area, because a vulnerable password here is a free ticket for hackers to cripple your site and do untold amounts of damage.

It can be inconvenient to remember frequently changing passwords, but in the end, it’s a simple solution that can save a lot of headaches in the future. It’s also imperative that you enforce good password practices for your users.

Compromised user accounts are a special hell of their own. Demanding that minimum password requirements are met for registration will force users to make smart choices. Insist on eight characters, at least an uppercase letter and a number or special character. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s worth it.

Make sure that any passwords are stored as encrypted values. Ideally, you’ll use a one way hashing algorithm like SHA. This method means that during authentication, only encrypted values are ever compared. In a worst-case scenario, if someone hacks in and steals passwords, this will limit the damage.

They can’t decrypt them, and they will be reduced to attempting dictionary or brute force attacks, trying every single combination until a match comes up. It’s time consuming and computationally expensive and just not worth the effort for most people.

Your wireless network password should be seriously strong, and the network should be protected by Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) rather than WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). WEP encryption is brittle and hackable in minutes these days and should never be relied upon.

It’s also imperative to ensure that your PCs are well protected against viruses at all times to prevent password theft.

2. Be discreet with your error messages

Make sure your error messages aren’t giving away too much information. If your website requires a login, you should pay attention to how your error messages deliver the message that their login attempt has failed. A quick-and-simple, very generic message such as “incorrect login information” is your best bet.

It doesn’t tell the user if half the query is right (especially not which half!) When a hacker is attempting brute force attacks to gain access to usernames and passwords and the error message identifies one field as correct, that’s valuable information for him. He then knows that he’s halfway there and can concentrate all his attention and effort on the remaining field. Don’t make it easy for them!

Hackers are quick to exploit any known holes and bugs, and you want to get there first. Sign up to the mailing lists and RSS feeds of all your software vendors. They’ll be the first to alert you to any security issues and their solutions. Find out and follow it up.

4. Limit Use of your Administrator Account

Keep your computer’s admin account for installing updates and software, or for reconfiguring the host when you have to. Don’t go online while logged into your admin account. Non-privileged user accounts are not just for guests and visitors: you should have one yourself for everyday use. If you browse the web and read your email with an admin account, you leave yourself open for an attacker to gain entry and access to your host.

5. Ask the experts

You don’t have to do it all on your own. There are good tools out there for monitoring your own website, but not everyone has the time or inclination to stay on top of security 24/7.

It’s possible to find monitoring services for very reasonable prices. These companies will check for malicious activity, give you an alert if your website shows up on a blacklist, scan your site for vulnerabilities, and be there for support and repairs if you do fall prey to a hack.

If you’re dealing with databases of sensitive customer information that are attached to your site, it’s probably worth it to get an expert in from the start, sweeping your code for bugs and building in extra lines of defense from the ground up. For small businesses, companies such as SiteLock and Stop the Hacker offer packages for under $100 a year.

This guest post was provided by Amanda Gareis on behalf of Drexel University Online. Drexel expanded into the online learning sector in 1996 and now offers its recognized curricula to a worldwide audience. Drexel Online offers degrees in Information Science, Information Technology, and Computing and Security Technology. The university also provides an Information Technology Career and Salary Guide resource for those looking to enter the industry.

Stronger data privacy law may clash with law enforcement – Legislation expanding privacy for data stored in the cloud is heading to consideration by the U.S. senate, and while it enjoys general support of industry and senators, the U.S. Department of Justice has not endorsed or even addressed the measure.

Protect your privacy with these five applications – The Internet is not a riskless place. It is filled with sites that are bent on compromising your privacy. Many general retail sites track your shopping habits and Web browsing history. More questionable sites may attempt to install key loggers or other types of Trojans. Fortunately, there are a number of different utilities that you can use to help protect your privacy. This article outlines five such applications.

How to add Windows 8’s best desktop features to Windows 7 – Although you can tweak and tuck a few things to almost completely banish the interface formerly known as Metro from your Windows 8 life, you can also try another tactic: not upgrading at all. Many of Windows 8’s best under-the-hood improvements can be yours in Windows 7 with the help of a few handy-dandy applications. Having your cake and eating it too has never tasted so sweet.

RAM shortage looms – It is starting to look like the IT industry will face a serious RAM chip shortage. Despite the fact that Samsung spent about $24 billion in the past two years beefing up the world’s biggest maker of memory chips to meet demand, there is still not enough capacity. The problem is that even with the downturn, there are still shedloads of smartphones and other mobile toys that need piles of mobile DRAM.

Google Glass kernel software goes public – Continuing a string of revelations about its high-tech spectacles, Google makes the software kernel underlying the devices — and the things they’ll eventually let you do — available for download.

Infographic: Shopping Made Easy on Mobile – Shopping has become an art form, based more in the science of bargains than the wild freedom of impulse buys. Before you even walk into a store, it’s likely you’ve already done some on-the-go research — perhaps in the parking lot of the department store or during a pre-shopping-spree lunch — deciding exactly what you want, where to find it, and how much costs.

How to grab a freeze-frame from a video – First, none of the techniques I describe below are likely to work with protected videos, such as Blu-ray discs. Second, grabbed frames seldom look as good as independently-photographed still photos. Video stills, especially of fast-moving action, contain a great deal of motion blur–which the brain doesn’t see when the frames speed by at 24 or 60 frames per second. They also tend to have lower resolutions. And finally, for best results, don’t try to grab a frame while the video is playing. Pause the video, find the right frame, and snap the picture.

AT&T Digital Life Promises Whole Home Connectivity – At the heart of Digital Life is 24/7 home security, which customers will be able to customize to suit their needs. This includes security cameras, sensors placed throughout the home, and professional monitoring provided through AT&T. That’s nothing new though; the exciting part here is the wireless connectivity and remote access afforded, allowing customers to quickly and easily view live feeds of their home from mobile devices like the Apple iPad.

SMBs in India lose $2.67 billion in productivity – Non-technical employees in India lose 7.6 hours of productivity per week managing IT, incidentally, the highest productivity loss of all countries surveyed. Microsoft would like them to think that Office 365 is the solution.

China shuts down top video piracy Web site – Authorities shut down Siluhd.com, one of the country’s top sites offering pirated content, and other video Web sites during the 13th World Intellectual Property Day last week.

Does Java 8 Delay Mean Oracle Finally Serious about Security? – It’s not quite the development freeze Microsoft underwent during the Trustworthy Computing push, but it’s a start for Oracle, which will delay the release of Java 8 until Q1 of next year, largely because the platform and browser plug-in is such a security disaster. This year has done nothing but reinforce that notion.

How to enable Family Safety features in Windows 8 – The Internet? Kind of a cesspool. And as the parent of kids who are now old enough to operate a Web browser, you can bet I’m keen on checking their activities and filtering out the inappropriate content. Thankfully, Windows 8 offers some solid tools for doing just that. (Windows 7 does, too, but Microsoft made them easier and more robust in the new version of the OS.)

Kaspersky founder warns nations face growing cyberattack threats – State-of-the-art cyberweapons are now powerful enough to severely disrupt nations and the organizations responsible for their critical infrastructure, Kaspersky Lab founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky says. As an illustration of his point, the number of malware samples analyzed by Kaspersky Lab rose from 700 per day in 2006 to 7,000 per day by 2011. Today, the number including polymorphic variants has reached 200,000 each day, enough to overwhelm the defenses of even well-defended firms.

Reported DDoS attacks up 200 percent – A new Akamai report provides insight into key global statistics including connection speeds, attack traffic, and network connectivity and availability, among many others.

Guardian Twitter Account Hacked by Syrian Activists – The Syrian Electronic Army struck again over the weekend, hitting another media organization’s Twitter account. The latest attack appears to be in retaliation against Twitter for suspending its account.

Company News:

Google spring cleaning claims Meebo Bar – Come June 6, the Meebo Bar publishing tool will get retired by Google, which says it plans to focus on projects like Google+ Sign-In and plug-ins. Meebo Bar is a JavaScript plug-in that sits at the bottom of Web pages and enables a lot of different social interaction and sharing features. Meebo also has mobile versions of its products. Google announced the news in a post today.

Activision’s salaries questioned – A key watchdog has bitten the rump of the boss of Activision claiming that his fat cat salary is a little too much. Activision is doing rather well but its supreme boss Bobby Kotick appears to be making more cash than seems reasonable. According to Bloomberg his total cash-and-prizes compensation jumped from $8.1 million in 2011 to $64.9 million in 2012.

Webopedia Daily:

Vertical application – A vertical application is any software application that supports a specific business process and targets a smaller number of users with specific skill sets and job responsibilities within an organization. Enterprise applications such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) are types of vertical applications. Vertical applications are often customized to meet the needs of industry-specific users. Vertical apps are also more complicated to use than horizontal apps, and because they need to integrate with other systems used in the organization, they may require IT assistance and deployment.

Games and Entertainment:

From Space to Living Room: EVE Online Getting TV Series – What does every massively multiplayer game need? Players? Check. A compelling storyline, plenty of features, and lots to do? Check. A dedicated user base, lots of updated content, and compelling expansions with new features to further trap players into additional months or years of gaming? Check. A dedicated television show? Whether you agree with that last one or not, it’s exactly where the ever-popular EVE Online franchise is now heading.

New Super Mario Forever 2012 – The diversity of the levels is very impressive. Game has also renewed graphics and much better scrolling in comparison to the original Mario. You will have to get through levels ranging from underwater caverns to levels filled with hot lava.

4 steps to reclaim your social media after a hack attack – Last week’s hacking of the Associated Press’ Twitter account is the latest in a number of high-profile social media hijackings. Eric Johnson, professor and director of the Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School, says that these types of hacks have become all too common. “Phishing is the most common method used to break into Twitter and steal credentials. They’re extremely simple hacks that can cause extreme havoc,” Johnson says. “It only takes one simple hack to create a world of problems. If you or your business falls victim to a social media hack, here are four things you should do to recover from it and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Fedora 19 alpha offers a peek at what’s coming – It’s not intended for production use, of course. Rather, the alpha software is available purely for testing purposes. Still, if you want to take it for a whirl to see what’s coming in the final release due in July, it’s now available as a free download. Here are some of the highlights of what you’ll find.

Infographic: Social Media Battle of the Sexes – Many adults have given into the social media temptation and have signed up for Facebook or created a Twitter account. But not all men and women agree on where to spend their online time.

Cloud adoption growing, but how big depends on who you ask – Is cloud computing really catching on in the enterprise? Well, that depends on who you talk to, recent surveys have found. RightScale, a company that acts as a broker between end users and public cloud service providers, released the most recent results of its annual State of the Cloud report and found that about 75 percent of respondents surveyed were using the cloud in some capacity. But 70 percent of organizations using the cloud seems like a lot to some people, such as Forrester Research cloud guru James Staten.

Security:

Locked and loaded, online gamers draw phishing attackers – Online gamers have become rich targets for cybercriminals, according a report released this week by the Anti Phishing Work Group. Over the last two quarters of 2012, phishing attacks aimed at online gamers jumped from 2.7 percent in the September frame to 14.7 percent in the December quarter, the APWG said in its Phishing Activity Trends Report for the fourth quarter of 2012.

Checking-In: May Be Dangerous – Many people use Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, or other applications that allow announcements to be published on the Internet about where you are. Perhaps you do too. But did you know that criminals, both cyber and terrestrial, can take advantage of check-ins to do you harm?

Military Grooms New Officers for War in Cyberspace – The U.S. service academies are ramping up efforts to groom a new breed of cyberspace warriors to confront increasing threats to the nation’s military and civilian computer networks that control everything from electrical power grids to the banking system.

AT&T Will Automate Your Home and Keep It Safe, but It’ll Cost You – Some day, you’ll never have to worry about whether you left the lights on, the garage door open or the curling iron plugged in, because you’ll be able to control it all remotely by phone or tablet. AT&T is offering a taste of that future right now–as long as you buy a home security package to go with it. On Friday, the company is launching its Digital Life service, which combines home security with optional home automation.

Tesla Model S Set to Beat Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf in Q1 Sales – You might not think it at first, given the not-so-insignificant price difference between the vehicles, but Tesla Motors’ Model S luxury sedan is allegedly set to best its rivals, the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, in first-quarter vehicle sales for the first time in the company’s history.

Webopedia Daily:

Composite applications – Applications that consist of pieces of other applications. Composite applications bring this information together in one place. For example, salespeople have disparate software applications that make it possible to do their jobs: software for contacts, ERP, a file system, and so on. May also be called custom applications, portals, Web applications, Web services, or complex applications.

More Stephen King headed to TV with the help of JJ Abrams – We’re big fans of time travel stories here on TG, and Stephen King wrote one titled “11/22/63,” the fateful day when Kennedy was killed. Now it looks like 11/22/63 will also be headed to television, with the help of JJ Abrams’s production company, Bad Robot.

Epcot’s Spaceship Earth turned into huge, animated Monsters Inc. characters – If you’ve only been to Disney as a kid a long time ago and thought all of the technology was magical, think about how Disney must have advanced with the times now that it’s 2013 and we’re all carrying around little internet-connected computers in our pockets that we can control via yelling at them.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Cracked: 5 Ridiculous Myths Everyone Believes About the Wild West – The Wild West, aka the Old West, was an astoundingly awesome period in American history that every person who has ever played Red Dead Redemption wants to emulate. Now, clearly pop culture has turned much of the true West into bullshit legend — there were never quick-draw artists who could shoot a six gun out of your hand with another six gun. But the basics were true, right? The lawlessness, the guns, the constant Indian attacks? Well … not exactly. Some common myths you probably still believe include …

Burner: Disposable Phone Numbers For Voice, SMS – Use your iPhone or Android phone like a disposable cell phone. For cheap you can buy a number (or multiple numbers) with voice time and SMS messages. If person-to-person anonymity is important, this app is for you.

Today’s Quote:

“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

– Henry Van Dyke

Today’s Free Downloads:

WinHTTrack – WinHTTrack is a free, easy-to-use offline browser utility. It allows you to download a site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer.

CISPA ‘dead’ in Senate, privacy concerns cited – The chairman of a key Senate committee cited “insufficient” privacy protections in the cybersecurity bill, recently passed by the House. A new report says the Senate is drafting separate bills.

Wolfram Alpha nerd-crunches your Facebook activity, turns your social life into data – Wolfram Alpha, the data-driven Google for math nerds, has created a free service that will analyze your Facebook activity and reinterpret it as visual graphs and interactable data points. For example, the service was able to devise that my average FB post length is 14.66 words, my top utilized significant word (excluding it, and, etc.) was “know,” and my most-liked post was a picture of a slice of pie I had last Thanksgiving.

Ccleaner – Download.com users’ top choice for keeping junk off their computers updates with optimized cleaning algorithms for Google Chrome and Windows 8. CCleaner’s simple and intuitive layout will appeal to users of all skill levels.

Google Drive gets automatic offline sync in Chrome – Chrome now supports automatic offline syncing for Google Drive, allowing you to read and edit any document, spreadsheet or presentation even when the Internet is down. To use this feature, you must Drive’s Chrome Web App installed, and you must enable offline access in the dialog box that appears.

Skype (preview version) is available on BlackBerry 10 – As expected, the Skype app is now officially available on BlackBerry OS version 10.1. Available now on BlackBerry World, the Skype app automatically adds your Skype contacts to your BlackBerry phone book when you sign in. Other features include the ability to send text messages and make calls to landlines and mobile phones for a fee.

E-signatures: The complete guide to paperless signing – Your best-laid plans of going paperless come to a screeching halt when you need to get someone’s signature on a document. That process typically involves printing the document, signing it yourself, faxing it to the other party, and waiting for them to print, sign, and fax it back—where it’s printed yet a third time and filed away in a cabinet forever. It’s an antiquated regimen. It’s busy work. But there is a better way.

How to test-drive Office 2013 free for six months– Fortunately, as you could with Office 2010, Microsoft allows you to “reset” your Office 2013 trial as many as five times, effectively giving you six months (more precisely, 180 days) of free usage. Although this option was really intended for IT administrators, there’s no reason you can’t use it with your own installed trial. As explained by the How-To Geek, the process requires a short and simple visit to a command line. Here’s the simplest way to go about it.

Security:

U.S. judge says FBI can’t hack crime suspect’s computer – A judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has denied FBI’s petition to install spying software on and using the built-in camera of an unidentified suspect’s computer in order to discover his or her identity and gather evidence of the crime from the computer’s hard drive, memory and storage.

US child abuse image suspect shielded from decrypting hard drives – The federal magistrate found that forced decryption would violate the computer scientist’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It’s no triumph for the agents who fight child abuse, but it is a win for privacy and for curtailment of government power over our data.

Google Joins FIDO Alliance Effort to Move Beyond Passwords – Google, which gradually has been moving its users away from using passwords as their main form of authentication for Web services, has joined a young organization whose goal is to phase out passwords and replace them with various forms of strong authentication.

Webopedia Daily:

Bluetooth 4.0 – A new version of the Bluetooth wireless device-to-device technology that offers significantly lower power consumption than previous versions. Also referred to as Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth 4.0 achieves its reduced power consumption by enabling devices to remain paired, or connected to each other, without requiring a continual stream of data to be transferred between the devices.

Voxiebox might finally make 3D tabletop gaming a reality – Of all the iconic scenes from the original Star Wars movie, the one that resonated with me the most was the hologram monster chess match. Despite all our Wolf Blizter- and Tupac-related holographic advances, we are nowhere near virtual 3D Dungeons & Dragons board games. At the NY Tech Day expo, I saw something almost equally as cool—a 3D tabletop gaming rig called the Voxiebox. Voxon, the folks behind the Voxiebox, are calling their glasses-free 3D device the first-ever volumetric entertainment system.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Old age is the killer app for Google Glass – Google Glass has a promissing future — although not in the markets that Google thinks it’s targetting: urban early tech adopters — they are a fickle bunch at best. Where Google Glass will make its mark and find a large and loyal customer base is in helping families and communities deal with the ravages of old age.

Today’s Quote:

“I’m not sure I want popular opinion on my side – I’ve noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.”

– Bethania McKenstry

Today’s Free Downloads:

WinPatrol 28 – WinPatrol takes snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to changes that occur without your knowledge. WinPatrol was the pioneer in using a heuristic behavioral approach to detecting attacks and violations.

Wise Youtube Downloader 1.11.49 – Wise YouTube Downloader is a free YouTube Video Downloader that can easily search and download YouTube videos so you can save them to your local computer or server.

The Best Antivirus for 2013 – The antivirus field is huge; I currently track over forty products. In a field that big there’s room for multiple winners. Three products share the Editors’ Choice honor for best overall antivirus: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013, Norton AntiVirus (2013), and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2013. Norton and Webroot tied for top score in my malware removal test, with 6.6 points. Bitdefender, with 6.4 points, wasn’t far behind.

Open Office docs right in your browser with Chrome Office Viewer – If you’re trying to run your business without spending money on Microsoft Office, you know the occasional hassles that go with being on the receiving end of Office documents. Google hopes to minimize that hassle with the Chrome Office Viewer extension, which makes it possible to view Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slide decks right inside the Google Chrome browser. Just a click a link to any such file and presto, it opens.

It’s privacy vs. security as CISPA arrives in Senate – On Thursday, US News reported that CISPA “will almost certainly be shelved,” citing comments made by an unnamed representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. US News also quoted Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel with the ACLU, who said, “I think it’s dead for now. CISPA is too controversial, it’s too expansive, it’s just not the same sort of program contemplated by the Senate last year.” Richardson estimates it could take several months for new legislation to come to a vote.

Protect your privacy with these five applications – The Internet is not a riskless place. It is filled with sites that are bent on compromising your privacy. Many general retail sites track your shopping habits and Web browsing history. More questionable sites may attempt to install key loggers or other types of Trojans. Fortunately, there are a number of different utilities that you can use to help protect your privacy. This article outlines five such applications.

Judge rejects FBI’s bid to hack computer of suspect in attempted cyberheist – A federal court in Houston has rejected an FBI request for a warrant to hack into the computer of a suspect in an attempted cyberheist. In, a sometimes testy, 13-page ruling earlier this week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas characterized the government’s request as overly intrusive and infringing on Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search.

Civil rights coalition says EU data protection bill threatens citizens’ rights – Some of the proposed changes to Europe’s data protection laws would strip citizens of their privacy rights, a coalition of international civil liberties organizations said Thursday. The European Parliament is currently considering proposals from the European Commission for a complete overhaul of the E.U.’s data protection laws. The original laws date from 1995, the pre-Internet age, and are arguably in great need of an update.

Make Any LCD Monitor a Touch Screen With a $5 Sensor – Researchers at the University of Washington’s aptly named Ubiquitous Computing Lab can turn any LCD monitor in your house into a touchscreen, with nothing more than a $5 sensor that plugs into the wall and some clever software. The ultimate goal of the Ubiquitous Computing Lab, as the name suggests, is to find cheap and easy ways of making everything around us interactive.

Google Sees Spike in Government Requests to Remove Political Content – Government requests to remove content across Google products spiked sharply in the second half of 2012, particularly those that covered political content, the search giant revealed Thursday. Between July and December 2012, Google received 2,285 government requests to remove 24,179 pieces of content, up from the 1,811 requests made regarding 18,070 during the first half of 2012.

Senators stall vote on Internet sales tax for now – Supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act still hope to vote on the bill on Friday or Saturday. The bill would allow states to collect sales tax on large Internet sellers that have no presence within their borders, curtailing the ability of Internet shoppers to avoid sales tax. Businesses with less than $1 million in annual Internet sales would be exempt from collecting the sales taxes.

Security:

Phishing attacks skyrocketing – A new phishing survey by the Anti-Phishing Working Group reveals that phishers are breaking into hosting providers with unprecedented success, using these facilities to launch mass phishing attacks.

Two-Factor Authentication Wouldn’t Have Prevented AP Twitter Hack – From the land of “if only…” If the Associated Press had set up two-factor authentication with its Twitter account, then pro-Syrian hackers would not have been able to hijack the account and wreak havoc. Nice and tidy idea, but in reality, no. While two-factor authentication is a powerful tool for securing user accounts, it cannot solve all problems.

35% of businesses experienced a DDoS attack in 2012 – Among the key findings from the survey, 35% of organizations experienced a disruptive DDoS attack in 2012. Of those surveyed, a staggering 39% of retailers and 41% of ecommerce businesses experienced an attack last year. Additionally, more than a quarter of respondents (26%) indicated a DDoS outage could cost between $50-100k per hour, further showcasing the need for a strategy around DDoS protection and mitigation.

Travelers to Israel can get their emails searched on entry – Travelers who enter Israel via the international Ben-Gurion Airport, especially those who aren’t Israeli citizens, can be asked by Shin Bet (the country’s security agency) officers to provide access to their email accounts in order to be allowed to enter the country. Israeli civil right advocates protest against the practice, saying that even though travelers have the legal right to decline the request for having their email searched, they will likely be denied permission to enter the country.

Company News:

AVG Technologies Surpasses 70 Million Downloads of AntiVirus FREE for Android – AVG Technologies, the provider of Internet and mobile security, privacy and optimization to 150 million active users, announced that its flagship mobile product, AVG AntiVirus FREE for Android has surpassed the 70 million download mark on Google Play, the first time this has been achieved by any security application.

Webopedia Daily:

Small business ERP – In ERP (enterprise resource planning) terminology, the phrase small business ERP is used to describe a lightweight business management software that is designed to meet the needs of a small business. ERP software integrates all facets of an operation, including development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. Small business ERP is typically a SaaS (software as a service) model and includes project management, financials, manufacturing, warehouse management, accounting, sales and business management.

Games and Entertainment:

Mobile game downloads expected to triple in the next five years – Game downloads for smartphones and tablets should triple in the next five years, a trend that will have a significant impact on console gaming. By 2017, the market for mobile games will reach 64.1 billion downloads more than three times what they were in 2012, when there were 21 billion downloads, according to a report released Thursday by Juniper Research in London.

XCOM shooter rebranded as “The Bureau,” arrives in August – 2K Games is ready to lift the curtain on XCOM once again complete with a live-action trailer, a trio of screenshots, and best of all a release date. Newly titled and packaged, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is set to hit consoles and PC on August 20, 2013.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Dvorak: Stop the Oversaturation of Connectivity – New York’s subway system is adding Wi-Fi connectivity to many stations and presumably the whole underground network will be equipped before long. The ubiquity of Wi-Fi in public places like this is a hazard that must be resisted.

Expand your utility belt with Underscore.js – The JavaScript library Underscore.js streamlines tasks and allows you to do more with fewer lines of code. Get a sense of what you can do with some of its 60+ functions.

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